No matter what you are doing, your mind is the most powerful tool at your disposal.
No longer seeing improvements in the mirror?
Been stuck at 120lbs on the bench press?
Don't feel like working out anymore?
The mind is often a forgotten piece of the workout puzzle. It's easy to forget about concentrating and mentally preparing yourself for a workout. All fitness goals are both physically and mentally demanding. You may not realize it but it could be your mind that causing any of the above mentioned problems.
In fact, mental preparation is so important that in his book, The Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, Arnold Schwartzenegger dedicated an entire chapter to it, Mind over Matter: Mind, the Most Powerful Tool. In it, Arnold emphasizes the point with a story about Franco Columbu, his one time training partner and close friend, who was performing squats at a local gym:
Franco got under 500 pounds, squatted down, and couldn't get back up. We grabbed the bar and helped him get it back on the rack... Just then four or five Italian-American kids from New York came in. "Wow," they said, "there's Franco! Hey, Franco!" They were great fans, and were looking forward to watching him work out...I took Franco aside and told him, "Franco, these guys think you're the king. You can't get under five hundred pounds again and fail." All of a sudden his face changed. He looked at me with big eyes, realizing he was on the spot. Then he went out onto the street and spent a while psyching himself up, taking deep breaths and concentrating on the lift.
He stalked back into the gym, grabbed the bar, and, instead of the six reps he was supposed to do with 500 pounds, he did eight!
This story demonstrates the importance of the mind to fitness. A lack of concentration and mental preparation can affect anyone, even professional bodybuilders. Below are three strategies to overcome a slumping mind and get your fitness goals back on track.
